


You Don't Know What You've Got 'Til It's Gone

by THA_THUMPP



Category: The Walking Dead (Comics), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alexandria Safe-Zone, Implied Relationships, Inspired by the TWD S06 ComicCon Trailer, Interpretations are meant to be wrong, M/M, Rating May Change, Rebellious Daryl, Rick is a Worrywart, Season/Series 06, Some characters will inherit the roles & personalities of other characters from TWD Comics, This will undoubtedly be an AU by October, so wrong it's RICKYL
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 15:05:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4353641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THA_THUMPP/pseuds/THA_THUMPP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick doesn't want Daryl going on any more runs, not with the threat of these scavengers calling themselves "Wolves" in the nearby area, and as the day progresses—the verdict on "Rick Grimes" continued and reached by the people of Alexandria—Rick really wishes he had tried harder to make Daryl stay... Especially if he may never get the chance to see him again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't Know What You've Got 'Til It's Gone

**Author's Note:**

> So we have some weird (wrong!) ideas about what AMC was trying to float with all the spliced audio and mirrored clips in the TWD S06 ComicCon trailer released last month. Our goal is to finish this story before the start of S06 and, while we're at it, completely eff up Carter's character just because he looks SUUUSPIIICIOUUUS~ Wish us luck!

The sky was an oceanic blue, the Georgia heat hot like anger, and the Alexandrian gates under watchful eyes. It was a new day, but Rick still felt stuck in last night’s trial, like he was being judged. This morning it was Daryl who was treating him like the odd man out, ignoring him with a silence as septic as cancer, and Rick didn’t know what he had done to deserve such treatment.

Deanna, who was now in mourning, had literally ordered for Pete to be put down last night. It was on her terms that he complied, too happily _maybe_ , but the man had it coming. Everybody who was gathered by firelight like children eager to hear the ghastly tale of ‘Rick Grimes’ saw that. Daryl, he didn’t because he wasn’t there. He came back to see the end of something, the beginning of something else. Aaron, Morgan—they did, too. But they weren’t who Rick was worried about right now.

It was only Daryl. He was the priority because he was family. He was supposed to have Rick’s back and agree with Rick when everybody else didn’t.

This rebellious streak, this was new, and the divergence it brought was unbecoming.

Rick couldn’t understand it. He wanted to, considering how Alexandria was a change of scene for everybody and that ever since walking through the community’s big gates he’d felt different himself, but not to this extent. Not enough to lose his way. Because things still had to happen for this ‘Safe-Zone’ in order for it to stand true to its name, future adjustments that were going to involve a lot of cooperation, pushing, and pulling.

On both ends.

That was a fact in itself. Now, Daryl might be feeling differently about it, but they had to keep moving forward on this new plan. There was no going back to the old, the takeover, meaning there was a long and bumpy road ahead.

Though, that was beginning to feel like a lonely road, and that made Rick nervous. He didn’t know what changed or where he screwed up, but he had a guess and it made his heart sink like stone to the pit of his stomach the longer he stood by and watched Daryl fiddle away with his motorcycle in preparation for another run.

Because his guesses were _always_ right.

Sometimes Rick wished they weren’t, but it made sense. He’d pushed Daryl, told him to try and belong, then took it all back, and now Daryl was pushing back the only way he knew how.

Distance.

They were currently standing, what, three feet away from each other? Four feet? Five?

Whatever the case, it was awful telling and too far. Hell, the house over felt closer, and after two minutes were passed in idle company Rick couldn’t stand it any longer. So in an effort to close the gap drifting between them like plates in the earth, he made to take a step. It wasn’t a big one, barely a shuffle with how the soles of his Cuban heels didn’t even lift off the ground, and yet Daryl went tense on the spot, like it’d been a leap. The man’s body turned away whether he meant it to or not, and as the rag he’d been using to clean his motorcycle’s motor was traded between his right hand and his left, Rick felt every muscle in his face scrunch.

Daryl could probably read the look for what it was—sadness—but Rick tried to mask it as a squint against the sun anyway.

“You know you don’t have to go out.” Rick rasped. _Out there_. Those two words once represented their world, but now all they meant was division. Fifty miles an eternity. Daryl wouldn’t know it, but the random people on and off the streets were the only things keeping him from sinking to his knees and begging.

“Yeah. I do.” Daryl responded, his voice dry in its husk.

“No. You  _don’t_.”

Rick took another step, this one bigger but still cautious, like he was wading into deeper water. It felt wrong to be so guarded when all he wanted to do was dip forward and handcuff Daryl to his wrist for safe keeping, but he knew he needed to take this slow.

“Let Aaron go.” Rick plodded as he waved the man in question on, who was parked by the gate with that eyesore of a rust bucket and trying not to look the least bit interested in their conversation. “Stay.”  _Stay for me._ “We, we need you here. I…”

Rick paused, eyeline drifting with the rest of his sentence. This talk needed to happen, but it was harder than he thought to meet Daryl’s stare and not hone in on that same disappointment it held last night when finding him caked in walker blood like it was a second skin—his real skin, the first one just a façade. Christ. Usually he could handle the pressure, but that depended on the person and the relation. And this was Daryl. Daryl’s intense eyes and impatient silence.

“Don’t go.” Rick finished very, very softly, and it could’ve been a command if it didn’t sound like breath alone.

“Gotta.” Daryl eventually murmured after a minute more of silence that felt like time without end, and Rick’s eyes were full of an angry hurt when they jumped back up, straight into murk.

“Daryl—”

The pocketing of Daryl’s rag cut Rick from his thoughts, and Rick’s squint expanded as Daryl walked around to the side of his motorcycle and mounted it with a bounce. The brush-off was clear by this point, but they weren’t done here because nothing had been absorbed or dismissed. Everything about this matter was still up in the air and building like bricks, the verdict of his exile included, and even though Rick was trying to be patient his patience had a short fuse… and the more it was tried the shorter it got.

The starting of Daryl’s engine was the point of ignition, and the vibratory rumble it released shook Rick to his very core.

It sounded like thunder, man-made but still powerful, and Rick felt a blinding flash of jealously overtake him as Daryl gassed the engine again—this time wearing an expression of content, like he was happier hearing its voice than somebody else’s he knew. Rick shifted beside the motorcycle. This was personal now, the preferential treatment not fair in the slightest, and as he continued to observe his lips had never tasted so sour in his life when he sucked at them, then pursed them.

How was it that one noise could sound so much like freedom to Daryl, but all it sounded like to him was loss?

“Daryl…” Rick tried not to make an emotional appeal or scene as he sat his hands down onto his hips and looked around the district, then back at the man in front of him. “You go outside those gates…” He used a nod to imply the direction of the walls and where he was hoping to drive his case. “Those bad people, the ones who laid that _trap_ …”

Yeah. Daryl had already brought him up to speed about that, said that he and Aaron had gotten into a bit of trouble before Morgan showed up and furry-fought some asses, and Rick could still feel the hairs on his arms standing in high alert.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if, if somethang happens to you.” Rick took a sharp breath, suddenly feeling like he had no air left in his lungs. “If you don’t come, if you don’t come _back_.” His throat tightened with prediction.

_I’ll go crazy. Christ, I already killed Pete. Could kill again. This time by accident. The next one on purpose. I’m a loose cannon without, without you here—_

“Been out there before, Rick.” Daryl squinted up from his seat, one eye tapered more than the other against the length of his bangs.

They were long enough to act as visors if Daryl ever sought to cover his face and hide, and Rick wanted to swab the mess of hair away right then so he could look into both and not just be peeked at like half a page of importance. But he couldn’t allow himself to reach out. Touch wouldn’t bring the man to his senses. Right now Daryl was in a rebellious state, wanting to butt heads with authority, and prove that he had grown a pair big enough speak his mind and tame beasts—his tongue the whip and his added, “Just’a job, man.” the echoing crack.

Rick nearly went weak in the knees. Is that what Daryl saw these runs as? No risk without reward?

“Lemme talk to Deanna.” Rick blurted, his heart wholly behind the words. “I’ll… I’ll see if she can give you somethang here. Here. Where it’s  _safe_.”

Daryl puffed loudly, lips rolling at something Rick didn’t quite catch as funny. “No safer ‘ere than it is out there. ‘Sides, ya can’t keep me locked away like some house cat. I don’ belong behind these walls an’ you know it. So stop tryin’ta sugarcoat shit. Ain’t gonna work. Still shit.”

“Then at least let me come with you.” Rick protested as he stepped in front of Daryl, who was now positioning his feet in preparation to move out.

“Nah.” Daryl shook his head as he turned his front wheel from side-to-side, getting a feel for the suspension. “You’re better off ‘ere. The people here, they need ya more. Them people out there, the ones like how we used to be, they need me. Aaron and I, we’re enough…”

“No.” Rick didn’t move from where he stood, features dense as he tried to discount how the exhaust from the motorcycle’s engine was heating the fronts on his jeans with a temperature hotter than human breath. “You see this place?” He asked, motioning around at the community with the flick of his chin.

Because he did. It was a haven of sheep without a shepherd, a refuge that would inevitably fall without the proper supervision and management, more so in light of this latest threat snapping away at its gates like a hungry wolf. So no more.

“All of us, here, in Alexandria. _We’re enough._ ” Rick corrected, and Daryl unexpectedly looked offended.

“Man, why’re you so against helpin’ others?”

“Why?” Rick felt his forehead channel like a winding river when his brows pushed high. “Because there  _are_  no others, Daryl.” He said-hissed as he leaned forward, took ahold of the motorcycle’s handlebars, and peered into eyes bottling a storm. “There’s only _us_. We got lucky. This _place_ got lucky. Those people, the one’s you’ll run into eventually—out there, in the woods.” There were those two fucking words again. “ _They_ are who I’m worried about.”

_No. YOU, Daryl, are who I’m worried about._

“I can’t protect you from in here!” Rick whispered loudly, in a pitch almost a yell, and Lori would be rolling over in her grave.

For years she’d been telling him to speak his feelings. _Speak, speak them out loud_. Well, finally he spoke. And now he wanted Daryl to do the same. To say something, and not just stare nuts and bolts at him like a busted Mercedes. Was that too much to ask for? Apparently.

“What happened, man?” Daryl said and his voice sounded like lightning against the thunder of his motorcycle. “Ya used’ta be nice. Used’ta wanna help people.”

“Daryl—”

“No.” Daryl waved a bare arm towards the gates, and Rick felt the after-breeze on his soul. “Ya went out lookin’ fer a little girl who weren’t yers, a little girl who everybody else thought was dead. Didn’t stop searchin’. Didn’t stop hopin’ that she’d be at the top’a the hill when ya got there… What happened?” He asked again, externally gruff. “All them folks from Woodbury, too. The ones left’ta die by that prick. Ya took ‘em in, gave ‘em a home. What makes this place so different, huh? ‘Cause you ain’t callin’ the shots? Ain’t leadin’ the brigade?”

Rick pinched his lips tightly, unknowing if he should even bother to defend himself with Daryl so fresh-red with anger, and Daryl snorted like he figured there’d be hesitation.

“Ya know what? I used to look up’ta ya. You were good, gave people’a chance… Now all I see is  _Shane_.”

“Hey.” Rick felt his heart sink with the weight of the past. “What I do, Daryl, hey—”

Rick jumped to the side just as the axles of the motorcycle started to creak with movement and Daryl jerked his front wheel away from him, like he was a pothole in the road. Damaging.

“ _Hey_.” Rick sought after the motorcycle as it was powerwalked down the street, managing a few paces beside it; one stride to every three rotations of the spokes. “What I do here, no matter how right or wrong it looks to you, I do it for my family. I do it in order to keep them safe. To keep…”

_YOU safe. Can’t you see that?_

“Save yer excuses fer somebody who still cares.” Daryl said, outlook crumbled as he revved the engine one final time, this time like he was trying to drown Rick out. “I’m sick’a hearin’ ‘em.”

“Daryl!” Rick called out, hoping to quell the hostility before the man lifted his feet for departure, but time didn’t play in his favor. His voice was too late.

Daryl was already rolling away like a storm over a prairie, peeling past Aaron and the rust bucket like a ghost rider, and flying out Alexandria’s opened gates like a bird from a coop; leaving Rick standing where he had stopped with emotions so strong he surely thought he could scream. But he couldn’t. He could only watch tongue-tied as the Alexandrian gates were closed off, listen as the muffling of Daryl’s motorcycle was no more, and linger on the street long enough to heed a silence way too loud for an unstable mind.

Did he and Daryl just have a fight?

Yes. Rick reckoned after he finally made his way ‘home,’ to a house as empty and foreign as he felt now. Yes, they did.


End file.
